


Collapse

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Armitage Hux, M/M, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: Hux gets shot. Ren alters his plans.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 35
Kudos: 497





	Collapse

**Author's Note:**

> i saw tros twice in the span of twelve hours and still am not sure about the sequence of events, so if i got anything wrong i apologize. also i'm distinctly unfamiliar with most things regarding hux's actual canon past so again, anything out of place is my bad
> 
> i've loved and thought nonstop about these two idiots for almost four years straight. that's really something

In the last seconds, five thoughts, in order: _I got away with it._

_Ren will be so angry._

_Ren knows how to take it out on me._

_Ren knows he has permission._

_Ren knows he doesn’t need permission._

Then Pryde turned, the blaster in his hand, and Hux thought something that was not so much a series of words as a sound, one prolonged shout of _oh,_ and then pain exploded across his ribcage, and whatever happened afterwards, Hux had no idea. 

\--

He was on Arkanis, and drops of rain splattered in at his feet through the open window of the big house. Brendol and Maratelle were off somewhere arguing, their voices drifting faintly down the hall. Hux dug his fingers into his arms and shivered, staring out at the plants that grew in the garden, the big-leaved grasses he was still small enough to stand under; and the wild rhosimmeron, lilac and violet and fluorescent pink, that grew and tangled itself in everything, choking out the yellow flowers Maratelle had planted; and the blue-veined osperidus, which grew twelve feet tall, and resembled dragons in flight. 

He was at the Academy, and he was twelve, still too thin for his father’s liking or any of his instructors’; they were making him do pushups in the gymnasium at one in the morning. They’d woken him up from a deep sleep by throwing water in his face and his chest was flushed from the exertion and his hair damp with sweat and they were laughing at him, and one of them saying, you’ll never be your father… 

He was graduating. His life spiraling out of his control but it never had been in his control really, and when he searched for his father’s face in the crowd it was stolid and unhappy. He hadn’t made top marks in his class and he understood that would mean punishment so he snuck out with a group of boys he thought least likely to comment and got shitfaced drunk, ended up with a split lip getting fucked behind the bar, skin chafed raw against the brick of the alley—

He was twenty-three. Twenty-seven. Thirty-two. His father was dead; he hadn’t spoken to nor heard from Maratelle in years. There was a man—thing—named Snoke and he wanted Hux for something, some weapon, and his strange feral mercenary Ren… the hooked nose and sharp eyes almost too intense to be looked at, and the power that he radiated, the tension coiling beneath his muscles, his broad shoulders… _What kind of name is Armitage?_ he’d asked, in that odd hoarse atonal voice, the first night Hux had been drunk enough or perhaps only stupid enough to invite him to his bed. 

_What kind of name is Kylo fucking Ren?_ Hux had retorted, looking over his shoulder; he’d been too fucked-out to move, though he’d never admit it out loud, and Ren was in the refresher getting a washcloth. 

_Well, I picked it, so._

_Doesn’t that make it worse? I certainly didn’t ask to be called Armitage._

Ren had only laughed, though, and walked back to wipe them both off and to kiss at the freckled slope of Hux’s shoulder. He’d never before been touched by the same person with such delicacy and such roughness. The contrast was jarring; it made Hux’s head spin. He never knew who he was around Ren and he never knew what mood Ren would be in from cycle to cycle and somehow that made it all the more exciting. After so many years of tight, almost ascetic control, to release himself… to find himself at the mercy of this—person—

He was watching the First Order collapse. Ren hadn’t been Ren for a while and Hux couldn’t comprehend the absolute idiocy of Ren being Supreme Leader; he wasn’t cut out to lead anything, except in the privacy of his quarters. He was impulsive and reckless and rarely seemed to learn from his mistakes or even to admit he’d made them. Hux understood without having to be told that Ren had killed Snoke, not the girl, but he understood also the ramifications of saying anything and so he kept his mouth shut. He knew how to wait; he’d been waiting a long time, his whole life, for things, revenge on the boys at the Academy who humiliated him or the officers who ranked higher than him or his father who threw all his failings in his face. He understood—if he just let things go for a little while, if he let Ren rule and stayed at his side (and in his bed) whispering advice to him, suggesting things (Ren was always more susceptible to suggestions after orgasm) perhaps Ren would listen to him eventually. And if he didn’t, and Hux saw the First Order on the verge of collapse—

He was thirty-seven. He was making the worst mistake of his life, except he didn’t know it yet. If he fed information out just the right way at just the right times he could fix Ren’s mistakes. He didn’t even necessarily know if he wanted Ren out of office or if he just wanted to knock him down a peg. If perhaps forcing Ren in a corner for the first time in his life would actually teach him a lesson and reduce him to sobbing pliancy—

He’d been shot. He was dying. Overhead he heard the familiar deep voice: “Get him into a bacta tank, _now,”_ and then roughly in his ear: “You _idiot,”_ and then the nothingness swallowed him up again. 

\--

When Hux woke he was lying flat on his back staring at the white lights and ceiling of a med room. There was a hypo coming out of his hand and another in his arm. The bacta was working on his chest; he could feel it, cold and uncomfortable, beneath the patch. He was shirtless in soft scrubs and no shoes and he could feel through the painkillers the ache, dull, hovering on the edge of his consciousness. It felt not unlike when he’d strained his muscles trying to prove himself at the Academy. It felt like someone had knocked him in the chest with a hammer. 

Beside him was the sleeping form of Ren, hunched in a chair. His hand was draped over the mattress beside Hux’s own; their fingers were just touching, the bitten down ragged beds of Ren’s beside Hux’s own meticulously filed nails. Hux twitched his finger and Ren came instantly awake. His eyes were frantic, damp at the corners. When he grabbed Hux’s hand he squeezed hard enough Hux became aware of the pulse of his own blood in his wrist. 

“Six days,” Ren said.

“What?”

“You were out for six days.” Ren reached up with the hand not currently chokeholding Hux’s and dragged his fingers through his hair so that it stood greasily on end for a moment before falling back into its natural pattern about his face. His strange broken beautiful face. For no reason Hux thought of the night he’d saved him from Starkiller Base, and how Ren had looked up at him from the snow, bloody and nearly unconscious. _You can’t kill me,_ he’d said, _Snoke will annihilate you,_ and then he’d proceeded to pass out. It had been quite a job dragging him back to the ship. 

“I was?” Hux said now, a little surprised. 

Ren was biting the inside of his mouth very hard—Hux recognized the expression, he was trying not to scream. “Pryde shot you,” he said, as though Hux didn’t already know. 

“He had good reason for it,” Hux said, because they might as well get it out in the open. 

Ren’s eyes narrowed. His grip tightened a little, the ragged nailbeds digging into Hux’s skin; but then he relaxed and looked away. His jaw was tense. Everything about him was tense. “We can—fuck. Discuss the, what you did another time,” he said. “You’re on so many medications right now I don’t think you’d even remember us having this conversation.”

 _I remember every conversation I’ve ever had with you,_ Hux thought, and watched Ren’s mouth twitch. Sometimes he forgot—he was drugged, he’d been shot, it wasn’t his fault—that Ren could read minds. 

“It was for—”

“If you say it was for the good of literally anything I will kill you myself and I will make sure it works this time; you are just, you are such an idiot, Hux, what were you thinking, if you were having problems with my leadership skills why didn’t you just come to me?” He was shouting; Hux thought, _calm down,_ but Ren ignored it. “You’re my second and there are, like, so many, just so many issues with how you handled this, I—”

“Ren,” Hux said. Ren looked at him with wild desperation and Hux said, “I’m not sorry I did it.”

Ren’s mouth thinned out. 

“I know that’s what you want me to say, but I’m not. And I certainly can’t lie to you of all people so why should I bother trying? It got your attention, and it’s got you off the helm for a little while.” Their fingers were still twisted together and Hux squeezed, so that Ren looked down to the soft wool blanket on which their hands were joined, and then back up at Hux’s face. “I didn’t think I was going to get shot. But you need to learn how to control yourself.”

Ren opened his mouth like he was going to speak, drew in breath, then shut it again. He looked impatient and upset and frustrated and in Hux’s hand he could feel Ren trembling, and he could see little trinkets on the shelves vibrating. For a long time they sat there like that looking at each other, Hux on the bed, Ren in the chair. He never once let go of Hux’s hand. 

At last a storm seemed to pass through Ren’s eyes and leaning down a little he pulled back the blanket with the Force so he could touch Hux’s chest with his free hand. His skin was cold and dry; it felt good against the lingering heat of infection, and against the dampness of the bacta. He traced around the edges of the patch with a deep furrow between his eyebrows until at last softly he said:

“That’s going to scar.”

Deep tissue wounds couldn’t always be healed completely. Hux remembered Ren’s vain anger at learning his own facial scar could be completely healed and tried not to laugh, but Ren caught the memory and they smiled together at its ridiculousness. The scar was barely visible, anyway. Hux wondered sometimes if Ren was disappointed in that. 

“I don’t mind,” Hux told him. He could feel the drugs trying to pull him back under; Ren’s hand was cool on his chest, and still in his own hand. The room was settling down now that Ren’s initial wave of anger had passed and for the first time in a while something felt loosened between them. “Who else is going to see it but me and you, anyway?”

Ren laughed once, short sharp burst of sound like candle flame caught in his hands. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Hux’s forehead; his large, strange nose bumped Hux’s hair, and Hux closed his eyes. 

“If you have somewhere to be,” Hux said, or thought, perhaps; he couldn’t tell. Either way he heard Ren’s response in his head:

 _Not for a while. I changed my plans._

_For me?_ Hux was drifting; he tried to smile. _Ren, my hero._

 _Go to sleep,_ Ren said, but Hux could hear him smiling, even in their minds. He felt Ren’s lips on his skin again, this time on his cheek, on the delicate skin beneath his eye, and then he was asleep. In his dream this time he was Grand Marshal, and Ren was Supreme Leader, and the whole galaxy was bowing before them. They were holding hands on the bridge of Ren’s ship and Ren was saying something to Hux he couldn’t hear over the roar of the crowd, but he thought perhaps it was all right, because Ren was still smiling, crooked and strangely sweet. 

_Maybe I can fix you,_ Hux thought, staring at dream-Ren, who for all he knew was real-Ren, dream-walking in Hux’s head to ensure Hux didn’t die or slip into a coma or anything else. _Maybe just a little._


End file.
